The last time I moved, I had to relieve myself of a lot of books. Just no room anymore. Now I have only one 6-shelf narrow bookcase and it’s full. But I’ve taken to the library these past few years anyway, so I don’t need much anymore. Still, I’m not averse to sending off books to people who might be interested. One just came up and it’s a pleasure to be able to send it off. This one bring Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights.

There was a time, back when I was a big book buyer, that I’d write my name in the front, along with the month and year that I’d finished it. As I get ready to send this away, I see this one is from August 1979, not quite 30 years ago. As I open it up, I also see that I liberally yellow highlighted this one. I hope the recipient doesn’t mind too much. I start to leaf through some of these parts that I thought worthy somehow of remembrance. And why not? This is after all, a novel of memory.

When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist

I had certainly forgotten this quote, but it’s the reason I have loved to travel over the past 10 years or so, most of it alone for this very reason. You cease to exist. It’s liberating. You are ‘anybody’ – and no one.

We underline or highlight passages for various reasons. Some we believe profound. Some we believe are profoundly funny. Some strike a personal chord. Some…well, some we just can’t seem to remember why we might have made special note. Hardwick is traveling in Montreal (as I have done many times). Why would I highlight this?:

Canadians, do not vomit on me!

Hardwick has much to say about why we live where we live. What goes into our decisions. I like this thought very much:

Every great city is a Lourdes where you hope to throw off your crutches but meanwhile must stumble along on them, hobbling under the protection of the shrine.

I see one other thing I would do at that time. I was in my mid-thirties and looking to get the education I felt I might have missed out on in college. Or perhaps I just missed that sense of wonder and discovery from those years and was trying to recapture them. I was hungry. Who should I read? Who do the great thinkers read? Who do the very creative minds read? Hardwick drops a lot of names andt looks like I may have highlighted every one of them. So many plans.

But gosh, I had forgotten what wonderful descriptions and reveries she has here on Billie Holiday (the “bizarre deity”). Pages and pages of them. Those passages are worth the book in themselves.